


Master of Fate

by agreatmanythings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Happy Endings Are For Pussies, Jedi Rey, Kylo Ren Redemption, Post-TLJ, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-19 01:10:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15498948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agreatmanythings/pseuds/agreatmanythings
Summary: Post-TLJThe Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has been overthrown and condemned to public execution by his own subordinates. After months of silence through their bond, Rey sails across the galaxy to... She's not sure yet, whether to free Kylo Ren, or let Ben Solo die.





	1. Out of the Night

“I am to die tomorrow, Rey,” he spoke casually, as though this revelation were a mere afterthought in his day, lazily rolling his head back to meet her eye, “Do you not pity me?”

The sea on Ach-Too was a rich, deep blue that cracked into white foam as the waves shattered in the wind. The sky rushed above Rey in grey rolling clouds as she sat with elbows on knees against the cool, cliffside stone. Serene. Kylo Ren sat beside her, hair flapping recklessly in the ocean wind as he remained folded uncomfortable upon the rock. 

When she refused to respond or even look at him, he turned his gaze back to the sea. “I suppose it should be ironic. Cathartic even-” His voice then dropped to an octave barely audible over the waves. “-It’s been a long time coming.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Rey spat before she could bite her tongue. 

“Am I?” he asked, eyebrow lifting with the slightest twitch, “There is not a soul in the galaxy who wouldn’t like to see my head on a pike. Tomorrow they will get their wish. I may be deserving of death, but I am not ridiculous, Rey.”

The young jedi awoke with a start, the sharp ventilated air of the Resistance base filling her lungs as she panted, sitting up in bed, back in her quaters. Kylo Ren was nowhere to be seen. Seventeen months and not a word, a push, or tug on either end of the bond. Not since Crait. Then suddenly…that.

“Rey!” her door began to tremble as someone pounded on the opposite side, shouting her name. 

She rubbed her forehead, turning to touch her bare feet to the cold floor. With a flick of her wrist, the door was open, and Finn came stumbling through, eyes wide. 

“Rey, Rey,” he huffed, “Kylo Ren has been overthrown by his own Order. He’s been sentenced to public execution tomorrow!” 

At this, Rey snapped her head up to stare at her friend, now fully alert. Kylo Ren had tried to warn her.

 

\---

 

There was a meeting. Of sorts. Every high-ranking member of the Resistance seemed to be shouting at one another. Even Finn and Poe.

“The First Order is distracted. All eyes will be turned on Ren. This is the perfect time to stage an attack!” Poe demanded, his hands stiff before him like knives as he emphasized every word with a slice through the air. 

“And possibly let Ren live -or worse- escape through the chaos?” Finn argued, appalled at his boyfriend’s suggestion, “Hell, no! Absolutely not!”

“Look, I hate him as much as the next guy but this is our one shot to strike the First Order in over a year! We finally have the means to do some damage.”

“And this would give Ren a chance to live! We cannot let that happen.”

Rey listened to the two bicker, shouting as though they did not share a bed at night or steal light kisses in the day. The strife of the command center was messing with her head, each person's anger stifling her thoughts as her mind seemed to vibrate with it, the frustration building in the Force around her. Then, a peace.

Rey snapped her head up. General Organa offered a sad smile to her from across the center’s holotable. The sole person whose mind was at a relectuant ease. An acceptance. Her only child was going to die. And in all the chaos, nobody noticed. 

The last jedi abruptly turned, rushing out of the conference room, the only eyes following her were that of a mother’s.

 

\---

 

Night seemed to fall agonizing slow for Rey. Once darkness clouded the horizon and the perimeter of the base, she took to creeping the halls with a satchel and a metal hilt, using the Force to avoid any of the night crew. She recalled a time when the night crew consisted of only two people sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. But that was long ago. Things have changed.

Rey sprinted across the base’s hangar, stopping at a TIE Fighter from one of the many defected stormtroopers. Pulling up a ladder from a nearby ship, she climbed up and opened the hatch, tossing her stuff inside. 

“What are you doing?” 

A child-like voice echoed throughout the silent hangar. Rose stood beneath her, lips parted and black curls framing her face as she stared up at the jedi.

“I-” Rey stuttered. It occurred to her, that even she did not really know what she was doing. 

“You’re gonna go to him, aren’t you? You’re going to Kylo Ren,” Rose stated as though a simple fact and not an act of treason. 

“I have direct orders from-”

Rose interrupted with a breathy laugh. “Are you gonna save him or kill him?”

Rey opened her mouth but no words came out. She really did not know.

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell them something was wrong with the ship or whatever.”

The jedi stared a moment at the young mechanic, bewildered. Rose assisting her defied all logic.

She puffed her chest and tilted her chin up in burst of seriousness. “May the Force be with you.”

Rey could only nod in gratitude at Rose, whose eyes now sparkled with a secret. She turned to climb into the hatch until-

“Rey,” Rose spoke up.

She glanced back down.

“You’re not a killer.”


	2. Thank Whatever Gods May Be

Rey sat in the pilot seat, back to him and hair half pulled up as she tinkered with the console. Kylo walked up from behind and bent over to press a kiss to the top of her head. 

“Zan wants his delivery in three days now instead of five,” she said bitterly, hands fluttering across the controls as he switched positions to rest his chin in her hair, long arms coming to wrap around her shoulders, “Damn spacer. He is in no position to make demands. What is he thinking? A trip that quick is near impossible. Do I look like some wizard?” 

Kylo snorted.

“What?”

He allowed his chin to slide off as Rey tilted her her back to look at him. 

He stared into those caramel eyes, blended with droplets of green and ferocity and resilience and everything that made her Rey. “Nothing.”

She dismissed him, returning to her earlier complaints and focus on the console. “All this work for some stupid credits.”

“We don’t need credits.”

Rey turned her gaze back up to him in disbelief. “Uh, we do if we ever want the rear shield generator fixed.”

“You could do it,” Kylo reminded her as she leaned back towards the ship’s controls, “You’re brilliant when it comes to fixing things.”

Rey snorted. “Yea, if its a ‘fresher sink or burnt out light. But not a shield generator. Not on this old girl.”

For the first time, Kylo tore his gaze away from her to take in the cockpit around him, falling back into the co-pilot’s chair. “We’re on the Millennium Falcon.”

“A frickin’ miracle your dad even let us have it. Never thought he’d let her go.”

His eyes snapped back to her. “He’s alive.”

“Last I heard, yea. Unless you know something I don’t.”

“Where is he?” Kylo finally found the courage to ask after a few minutes of silence and Rey muttering to herself. 

She turned her chair completely around to face him. “You’re acting really weird, Ben. Are you sure you’re okay?” His breathing seemed to halt, before she continued on, “We both know he’s on Naboo with Leia in their new home. Happy and safe.”

Kylo forced himself to nod, swallowing the sudden urge to cry. “Good. Good.”

A small, calloused hand reached out to touch his cheek, sliding along his skin to tip his chin up. 

“Ben,” Rey whispered, “He’s okay-” She offered a small smile. “We’re okay.”

 

\---

 

Kylo dreamt of Rey multiple times while in his cell. Each one fueled by fever and starvation, for food and for her. Sometimes, she was violent and feral towards him, sometimes kind and even loving. But that last one, had been his favorite. 

He remained magnetically chained and crouched against the durasteel wall for three or four days. He was not sure, but it did not matter anyway. They were not feeding him, but also not torturing him. Just leaving him, chained like a dog to lap at the occasional bowl of water slid across the floor to him. It seemed fitting. He was once the Supreme Leader’s dog after all. Until he bit the hand that fed him. Kylo let out a dry, humorless laugh into the silence. It echoed down the empty hallway and vibrated in his deprived head. 

Only the flicking of the ysalamir’s tongue replied. The freak of nature stared at him from above in it’s hanging cage, beady eyes unblinking. It was disgusting really. The only thing preventing him from the Force or any chance of survival was a lizard the size of his forearm. Kylo hated it. They did not even bother to give him a proper cell door, just some petty bars that could be opened with a key. Eventually, once he began the fever-induced dreams, they even took away the guards. 

The unmistakable slap of shoes against the floor began to echo distantly down the hall. Kylo tugged against the electromagnetic pull of his chains slightly, ignoring the weight of iron against his neck and wrists. Then Rey was standing there -just outside the bars- breathless and ethereal and ... another illusion. He let himself get pulled back against the wall. 

“Have you come to save my soul?” he mocked, words slurring from the stickiness of his dry tongue. 

She did not reply, and instead stepped back, features tight in determination as she studied the cell bars. Her hair was longer in this hallucination, trailing just beneath her shoulder blades. He liked it.

“They’re just regular bars,” he told her, “Phrik, so technically lightsaber-resistant, but still, regular.” 

Her gaze turned back to him, dense with the silence of seventeen months. A shot of guilt pumped through his veins. 

“Then why are you still here? Why don’t you just make your damn great escape and live?”

Kylo lifted a finger and waggled it at the overhanging ysalamir cage. Rey let out a huff of frustration.

“You know,” he began, allowing his eyelids to droop shut as she grasped at the bars, shaking them to test their strength, “I always dreamed I would meet someone like you. I suppose everyone has, we’re all lovesick idiots. I just never thought I would find you-” He let out a chuckle, then drawled out the last words in a mocking sing-song voice. “And I pfassked it up. Typical Ben Solo. Perhaps in another life-”

A crash and suddenly, Rey was falling, taking the door and broken lock with her, right into his cell. This was no fever dream. This was real. 

“No!” Kylo shouted as she fell, landing harshly against the bars. 

He tried to crawl to her, but his chains pulled him back as he descended into a panic.

“Rey, Rey, why would you do that? You brilliant idiot!” 

Before she could reply or even lift her head, stormtroopers surrounded them as the ysalamir screeched above. 

 

\---

 

General Hux did not dare appear before his prisoners until they were properly secured. Rey had fought like a wild animal, kicking and scratching and biting. But with the ysalamir cage and the troopers armed with tasers, she was quickly taken down, before her and Kylo were escorted off the ship and into the buried depths of some building. Both of them shackled, magnetic chains connecting their necks, hands and feet to the durasteel floor.

“If it isn’t the little sand rat,” Hux sneered, stepping out of the shadows, once he ordered the stormtroopers to disappear, “Today is truly a day of wonders for the First Order. Two enemies, one blow.”

Rey only glared down at him, eyes following even as he turned to stand before Kylo. His pale chin taking on a defiant tilt as he stared at the once Supreme Leader.

“I spent months, countless hours, trying to prove you guilty. That you killed Supreme Leader Snoke. I knew it from the moment I found you unconscious and beaten in his throne room. Either you were weaker then I dared to imagine, or you killed your master for a pair of pretty eyes.” 

A twisted smile crossed his lips as the general stepped back, glancing from one to the other. “And now it is fitting, for two star-crossed traitors to die together-” Then he scoffed. “-May the Force be with you both.”

As he turned and began retreating into the darkness, his footsteps fading, Rey began to tug and fight the binds around her with a grizzly determination, the deep thrum of the magnetic field growing louder and heavier each time she pulled.

“The electromagnetic metal messes with our connection to the Force,” Kylo spoke up, staring blankly ahead, “They render us useless.”

She tugged harder, the hum growing, “Not all of us have lived our lives using the Force as a crutch.” The noise grew deafening, till her binds snapped back, yanking her wrists back down. Her exhausted panting was soon the only thing echoing into the darkness.

“Rey,” Kylo’s voice came deep and solid, “You will not die. Not today.”

The jedi laughed dryly. “What makes you so sure, oh Supreme One?”

“I will not allow it.”

She turned to look up at him. The man she found in the First Order cell was gone. This man stood with a straight spine, chin up in defiance as the eyes, that once gazed bloodshot at her from behind bars, were now alight and staring with an overwhelming intensity. This was a man alive. This was the Ben Solo she once knew.

She abruptly turned before she could crack under his gaze.

“I came to rescue you,” Rey blurted, sounding all too blunt and informal against the echoing durasteel walls, “Or to kill you-” She added. “I hadn’t actually decided yet.”

Something burst through Kylo’s throat, sudden and loud and vibrating. He was laughing. 

Rey stared as though he was downright insane, as his broad shoulders shook and head bent forward. What she assumed was a smile, seemed to break and shine through his features like a cracked lantern. And maybe, some part of her thought Kylo looked handsome. Suddenly, she was laughing along.

In the inappropriate display of pure joy, Rey felt something snap between them, and a blanket of peace soothe their bond. One that washed away the empty months and cold silence and desperate bitterness and all felt not forgotten, but forgiven.

His laughter soon calmed to subdued gasps and hiccups pummeled her lungs as Kylo gazed upon her, traces of a smile still lingering in his features. 

“Thank you.”

Rey’s eyebrowed lowered in confusion. “For-” hiccup “-what?”

He rolled his head lazily, as she had seen him do not two nights ago in her dreams, black waves of hair sweeping over his cheek and nose.

“For everything.”

A light, unsure yet hopeful smile bloomed in her features, and he reflected it back.

Without warning, the darkness above erupted as a harsh light shot down upon them, and a deafening thunder tripped their heartbeats. The metal floor beneath their chains began to climb, raising them helplessly towards an inevitable fate. 

“Ben…”

Rey looked over in a panic to see him staring up at the opening, the light undoubtedly burning his eyes as the apple in his throat bobbed. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to hold him close and tell him everything was going to be okay. 

The thrum of the binds started to grow again as a hand reached across the open space to grasp around a large pale one. Kylo lowered his gaze as her fingers wrapped around his desperately, her feeble attempt at comfort, but it had worked for her, some seventeen months ago.

He turned to look at her, his skin dry and cracked against her fingertips as he squeezed tightly, warmth buzzing between their touch, and suddenly ... they were no longer being cradled towards death, or doomed to perish violently. They were just Ben and Rey -alone but no longer lonely- in a mud-caked hut beside the firelight, holding hands and just, understanding. 

“Ben,” she whispered, “You’re not alone.”

Then the applause hit.

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I'm a sucker for angst being extra af with death and wild redemption arcs. Blame Les Miserables.


End file.
